Object Lesson on the Impossibility of Abiogenesis

[dysert]

What are the odds of a sperm succeeding and you being born and surviving to end up winning the lottery twice in three months? ( New York Man Finds $2.9 Million Winning Lotto Ticket in His Truck - ABC News)

Abiogenesis =

I wonder what the odds are on that.

 

[Loudmouth]

I wonder what the odds are on that.

 

[Mediate]

Here's a nice little object lesson to demonstrate the impossibility of abiogenesis occurring.

Write 10[sup]50[/sup] on a board.

This is the number mathematicians say is the limit of probability of something happening.

Anything after that is considered mathematically improbable.

Now take a deck of cards and shuffle them, and write down on a piece of paper what order you think the cards are going to turn up.

What are the odds that you wrote the correct order?

1/52!

That's one in the factorial of 52, or 1 in 52 x 51 x 50 x etc, all the way down to x1.

Now explain that, for the simplest of life to have occurred, 256 proteins would have had to have come together in the correct order, or abiogenesis is a bust.

That is almost five decks of cards.

The odds have now gone from 1/52! to 1/256!.

Or 1 in 256 x 255 x 254 x etc.

Since the limit of probability of something occurring is 1/10[sup]50[/sup], we can easily see that probability laws dictate that abiogenesis is improbable.

And consider this:

Scientists believe the universe is 14.7 billion years old.

That would be 463,579,200,000,000,000 or 463.5792 quadrillion seconds.

But 256! goes off the scale.

This means that, had the proteins started trying to come together in the correct order since time started -- and they didn't, since life has only been around for some 3.8 billion years, according to scientists -- there are not nearly enough seconds in existence to cover the probability of abiogenesis occurring.

So we're not dealing with just "mathematically improbable," we're dealing with "physically impossible."

If probability worked like this then you'd be right. But it doesn't. Probability is a measure of the chance of something, not a specific detail of ''when and how'' something would happen. Life could have arisen in the very first second that the chemicals were available on Earth, or in the 90 billionth, or it could have not arisen at all until another billion years from now. Your probability calculation at the end there assumes that the amount of seconds cited must pass before life could arise. That's simply not true.

There are several other problems with this. Biochemistry is not a probabilistic chance equation. It cannot be. Murphy's Law, the laws of electromagnetism, the anthropic principle. What can happen, will happen (and it has), chemicals interact in definitive electromagnetic mechanisms, life has an arbitrary definition and if things ''weren't as they were'' in regards to physical laws then they'd be something else and we can't use that mysterious ''something else'' as an argument to talk about the probability of chemicals interacting in the way that they do as opposed to that ''something else''.

Complex chemical forms interact in the already existent mechanisms for their interactions, in innumerable ways, to form simpler or more complex molecules. The assumption that life has an objective meaning or definition, coupled with the assumption that 256 specific proteins are the threshold for ''life'' as opposed to ''non-life'', lead you to a false probabilistic conclusion on the chance of life arising. It is false because the premises on which that calculation is made are false.

Probability calculations for abiogenesis are meaningless in determining the chance of life arising from chemicals because ultimately, here we are, made of chemicals.

 

[AV1611VET]

Probability calculations for abiogenesis are meaningless in determining the chance of life arising from chemicals because ultimately, here we are, made of chemicals.

And that's why I use the Bible, and not probability calculations, to argue against abiogenesis.

 

[mzungu]

And that's why I use the Bible, and not probability calculations, to argue against abiogenesis.

No AV, you clearly tried to use probability in your OP. Shot yourself in your foot again eh

 

[AV1611VET]

No AV, you clearly tried to use probability in your OP.

Indeed I did.

That was an extra.

I don't always resort to pulling rank on science.

Shot yourself in your foot again eh

Not at all.

I showed the probability of 256 things coming together in just the right combination; be they protein molecules or freight cars on a train.

I stand behind my OP.

 

[AirPo]

And that's why I use the Bible, and not probability calculations, to argue against abiogenesis.

That argument doesn't work either.

 

[AV1611VET]

That argument doesn't work either.

Probably not.

I can't use the Bible to say Jesus walked on water, can I?

 

[AirPo]

Probably not.

I can't use the Bible to say Jesus walked on water, can I?

No.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Probably not.

I can't use the Bible to say Jesus walked on water, can I?

Not any more than I can use Harry Potter to prove the existence of magic.

 

[dysert]

Probably not.

I can't use the Bible to say Jesus walked on water, can I?

Not any more than I can use Harry Potter to prove the existence of magic.

Can AV use the Bible to say that the soul that sins shall die?

 

[PsychoSarah]

Can AV use the Bible to say that the soul that sins shall die?

About as much as he can use it to prove that souls are a real thing.

 

[quatona]

Here's a nice little object lesson to demonstrate the impossibility of abiogenesis occurring.

Write 10[sup]50[/sup] on a board.

This is the number mathematicians say is the limit of probability of something happening.

Anything after that is considered mathematically improbable.

Now take a deck of cards and shuffle them, and write down on a piece of paper what order you think the cards are going to turn up.

What are the odds that you wrote the correct order?

1/52!

That's one in the factorial of 52, or 1 in 52 x 51 x 50 x etc, all the way down to x1.

Now explain that, for the simplest of life to have occurred, 256 proteins would have had to have come together in the correct order, or abiogenesis is a bust.

That is almost five decks of cards.

The odds have now gone from 1/52! to 1/256!.

Or 1 in 256 x 255 x 254 x etc.

Since the limit of probability of something occurring is 1/10[sup]50[/sup], we can easily see that probability laws dictate that abiogenesis is improbable.

And consider this:

Scientists believe the universe is 14.7 billion years old.

That would be 463,579,200,000,000,000 or 463.5792 quadrillion seconds.

But 256! goes off the scale.

This means that, had the proteins started trying to come together in the correct order since time started -- and they didn't, since life has only been around for some 3.8 billion years, according to scientists -- there are not nearly enough seconds in existence to cover the probability of abiogenesis occurring.

So we're not dealing with just "mathematically improbable," we're dealing with "physically impossible."

What were the odds for this particular raindrop to hit my nose at 15:46p.m. today?
Mathematically highly improbable, and according to your line of reasoning "physically impossible", and yet it happened.

 

[AV1611VET]

What were the odds for this particular raindrop to hit my nose at 15:46p.m. today?
Mathematically highly improbable, and according to your line of reasoning "physically impossible", and yet it happened.

Cute.

The trick is predicting the exact drop that will hit you at the precise time.

IOW, before it happens.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Cute.

The trick is predicting the exact drop that will hit you at the precise time.

IOW, before it happens.

Since when are we trying to predict events like that?

 

[crjmurray]

Cute.

The trick is predicting the exact drop that will hit you at the precise time.

IOW, before it happens.

No no no no no. How many times does this have to be repeated. You are calculating the odds after something has occurred then declaring it impossible. NOT BEFORE. It is literally the entire point of the card shuffling argument. The only thing that's been proven here is that you don't understand probability.

 

[quatona]

Cute.

I don´t think you are in the position to be condescending.

The trick is predicting the exact drop that will hit you at the precise time. IOW, before it happens.

So your actual point is that it was highly improbable to the point of being impossible to predict abiogenesis before it happened?

No disagreement there. (Apart from the fact that nobody was there to predict it, anyway.)

However, your OP and subsequent posts made it sound like you were saying that it is highly improbable to the point of being impossible for abiogenesis to have happened.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Cute.

The trick is predicting the exact drop that will hit you at the precise time.

IOW, before it happens.

Exactly, which is why we keep pointing out that calculating the probability of mice evolving (or whatever) from first principles after they have already evolved is wrong wrong wrong.